Flex your tensor tympani?

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I never thought anyone could do this.
But I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing, although the thundery sound reminds me of the sound I can make in my ear.

Yes, I do that all the time. I never knew that there was anything unusual about it.

Yes, I can do it too. I was wondering what that rumbling sound was that I am able to make!

Yes, louder on the left than the right. I can't do the left individually, it comes in with the right. But I can do the right seperately.

I used to do this if I was bored. I'd forgotten about it for years.

I'm not sure if/how you can acquire conscious control of a muscle that you don't already have conscious control of. I can wiggle my little toe on my right foot from side to side, but I can't move my little toe on my left foot at all. So, even though I know what it should feel like, I just can't make 'contact' with that leftmost toe... Perhaps you'll have better luck.

The difficult part will be making 'contact' with the muscle. Once you figure out how to do this, simply exercising it will then enhance your control. Hopefully, you can already flex it a little bit, but you just don't realize it yet. Try going through the movements of yawning, chewing, swallowing, or the 'valsalva maneuver' (again, see wikipedia). As you do these things, listen for any sort of rumbling sounds coming from within your head. If you hear this, repeat that movement but slowly and less forcefully. Keep trying to move less and less until only the sound remains.

Good luck!

^ that's a good point, DC. Perhaps the reason many of us can do this is that we have spent more time alone and have therefore "experimented" with our bodies more (get yer minds outta the gutters you pervs!! !). Ear wiggling is a similar thing. We have the muscle and the ability to take control of it, but isolating just that particular muscle is the hard part to learn.

I think that ... ... ... HOLY SHADES OF OZZY OZBOURNE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THAT BAT, MAN?!?

yeah, i've always been able to do this. it doesn't necessarily muffle outside noises completely, but it diminishes them somewhat. it's weird how i don't exactly know what i'm doing to make it happen either, just like i don't know what i'm doing to voluntarily make goosebumps appear on my skin. but i'm doing it.

maybe it's a vestigial animal thing, like when some animals turn their ears backwards or forwards, dogs, horses, etc.

i also thought everyone could do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscle

I asked my housemate who is normal and he can do it too. It probably isn't an AS specific thing

Just taught myself to do it.

I can do it. I hear a low bass noise inside my skull near my ears.

So it's just the... yawning.. thing? As in, flexing this thing, is it kind of like yawning at will? Because I kind of thought everyone could do that. I mean, isn't yawning partly voluntary?

No, I mean when you yawn these muscles will temporarily flex. It's just a way of finding which muscles they are talking about. I can flex my T.T.s without yawning.

Yep! Wow... I always wondered what that was. I never heard anyone say anything about this, so i thought it was just me. I can do it whenever.. There's one thing that's a rumbling and another that's a click(that i can do more in my right eat than my left). I also sometimes get that rumbling noise automatically after i hear a loud noise, like that page explained. Also, it involuntarily gets really tense and loud when i'm sick.. like, about to throw up or something. I always considered it my "warning sound" because it would always let me know when i was about to be sick.

i get the rumbling by tilting my head up and move certain ways, maybe thats just usual hearing of the body?

i cant 'force' it for more than a moment, but the deafness seems to persist for a while anyway.

the clicking - ive been doing this a LOT when ive been deaf or anxious about whether my hearing has been damaged by some noise or other. Im a little concerned now that it might be a bad thing to do too much? - is some critical piece of apparatus being eroded?

As I was looking this up I realized I have been doing this for years voluntary or semi-voluntary(can stop myself) without realizing what I was doing.

Is this even used in therapies? This is one reason I am not very motivated to see a psychiatrist. The things I discover that help myself seem so beyond the pale to the mainstream(and yet more effective) I would expect them not to know about these things.

I also realized strangely that sometimes when I yawn I don't flex it. Is there a reason it's supposed to flex when you yawn? Could I be doing damage this way? Should I make sure from now on when I yawn that I flex the muscle?